A Trip Down Market Street, 1906 - With Sound!
Why Hacker News recommends it
Cited in street-safety and self-driving threads as a picture of chaotic, shared streets before cars dominated.
What it is
A sound-designed restoration of the Miles brothers' 1906 film shot from a cable car down Market Street in San Francisco, four days before the earthquake. It shows streetcars, horse carts, cars and pedestrians mixing freely.
Recommended by 1 HN commenters across 1 different months, 2018 to 2024.
What Hacker News said
Recommends Johnny555 · 2019-10 · on “Drivers are killing pedestrians at highest rate in almost 30 years”
It's interesting to watch this video of San Francisco's Market street from 1906: [this video] Cars travel at walking pace, and cars, streetcars, horses, etc all coexist -- pedestrians seem to cross the street at will, not following any signals or staying in crosswalks. I think the reason this chaotic system works (aside from the lower speeds) is because street users expect the chaos, no one relies on a traffic signal to tell them when it's safe to cross, they know that they have to pay attention or they'll be run over (or will run over someone else).
Cites Fnoord · 2018-04 · on “How I learned to live again, after running a man over”
Reminds me of the video "A Trip Down Market Street" (in San Francisco, 1906, right before the earthquake) [1]. This comment on the video says it all: "The good old days when kids use to play in traffic lol". All the jaywalking. Look how relaxed people are. No smartphones. Its distasteful however how some people seem to break traffic laws. Especially speeding. A road at an elementary school nearby which I regularly pass enforces 30 km/h. People drive at least 55 if not 60 (the default is 50). The gains from such behaviour are minuscule, if any. Even the gains of driving 150 instead of 130 for 2 hrs are minor. [1] [this video]
Cites charlesism · 2018-08 · on “Self-Driving Car Makers Prepare to Blame “Jaywalkers””
> Let's hope we don't end up with an even more > pedestrian hostile world than what we have already. Unless there's a cultural sea change, you can bet on it worsening. If you take presentism out of the equation, what we have now - ie: most roads off limits to humans due to giant metal death machines - is insane. [this video]
Cites snakeyjake · 2024-03 · on “The built environment and the determination of fault in urban pedestrian crashes”
>Before the advent of the automobile, users of city streets were diverse and included children at play and pedestrians at large. This is not true and there are numerous counter-examples. City streets have always been dangerous for pedestrians and notable illustrations of this are the separate gates at city entrances for vehicles (pulled by beasts of burden of course) and pedestrians and the construction of sidewalks and crosswalks one example of which I've seen in person is the civil engineering of Pompeii where pedestrians were segregated from road traffic over two thousand years ago. [LINK] Another example is the Pont Neuf bridge in Paris. Completed in the early 1600s it was built with wid